17 December 2008
A new Women's Health Australia study suggests women aged 28 to 33 are in poorer mental health than their mothers or grandmothers, with almost one in five reporting a diagnosis of depression by a doctor, The Australian reports.
They reported higher rates of depression (18 per cent) than women aged 53 to 58 (13 per cent) and those aged 79 to 84 (10 per cent).
Study co-author Julie Byles from the University of Newcastle said the data understated the problem, given that 60 per cent of young women with depression were not on antidepressants. "It's only the tip of the iceberg," she said.
::View Article::
Why are younger women reporting higher rates of official depression diagnosis compared with older generations? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that depression used to be a taboo topic in society, not something you were inclined to talk about with strangers leading to a situation in which older women do not report depression to their doctors or people conducting these sorts of studies.
Perhaps, however, it has something to do with the contemporary Australian culture that has shaped the values and aspirations of women aged 28 to 33, in contrast to those epochs of Australian culture that women now aged 52 to 58 and also 79 to 84 formed their lives within when they were younger.
This is not to put forth the nostalgic proposition that everything modern is evil and everything old was good, but rather that certain values and aspirations that have moved to the forefront of what our society promotes are often less than fulfilling: materialism and the associated empty cultivation of need that stems from always feeling like something is missing, individualism and the decline in the communitarian or collective aspects of daily life, and perhaps also the self-centred attitude towards relationships which portrays happiness coming from one night stands and casual sex.
16 December 2008
A GAY activist from Sydney says his human rights have been violated by the human rights watchdog itself - because it refused to ban a "homophobic" Telstra ad about two men in a tent.
In the ad, two men on a camping trip become suspicious when their two mates disappear into a tent.
It later emerges they are simply watching cricket on the same mobile phone.
::View Article::
Some activists need to lighten up. Australians embrace humour and a part of that humour seems to be to not take ourselves too seriously, whatever our lifestyles.
This isn't to say poking fun at someone in a vicious manner is constructive, but rather that we can have a laugh at ourselves without it turning into a race to the court rooms. This is nice because it perhaps represents a lowering of the ego, or the collective understanding that all the different passions, desires and behaviours of human beings are pretty funny when considered from afar.
Why does this activist want gay people to be treated 'unequally' in this respect?
14 December 2008
European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas yesterday joined the call for Australia to cut emissions by 25 to 40 per cent — the overall target range scientists say is necessary to avert dangerous climate change.
In one of three speeches to the conference, Senator Wong warned it would be difficult for Australia to meet its long-term target of a 60 per cent cut by 2050 due to its growing population and energy-intensive economy, but said strong action would ultimately secure and create jobs.
::View Article::
Population growth in Australia is taken as 'a given' by politicians and bureaucrats. Any policy measure, any forecasting about the future, any public debate simply accepts, in areas where population is relevant (i.e. the environment, town planning including suburban sprawl and housing, transport, infrastructure, water) that it will grow - significantly.
But as the national population grew by as many as 336,800 new individuals in simply the one year to April 2008, the questions should be asked: Where has the idea of significant population growth been publically debated? Why is it never an election issue? Why is it an unspoken policy measure carried on by each succeeding government?
Carried on by each succeeding government? Yes...
See, 60 per cent of our national population growth comes from overseas migration, while only 40 per cent is due to 'natural increase' (domestic birth rates). So out of the near 337 thousand new Australians created in the year to April '08, either 'naturally' or via migration, roughly 202 thousand were migrants. Migration is a government initiative, a policy, even if largely unspoken. It is connected with the domestic religion of growth for the sake of growth.
12 December 2008
Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, popular culture increasingly insists on pretending that women are always as hot for it as men are.
A study by Girlguiding UK, released in June, showed that girls as young as 10 are anxious and stressed by the sexualising influence of popular culture.
Walking past a lingerie shop in Carlton I spotted an advertisement that turned my stomach.
"Hot Milk" targets pregnant women with the lie that its brand "celebrates the sensual, sexy woman inside the loving mother".
::View Article::
Our primarily commercial society operates via either creating or stimulating needs/desires that require (the purchase of) a certain product or service in order to be satisfied.
Sex/beauty/attraction is one area of life in which this practice is really effective, and, increasingly, it's not being restricted simply to women. We're told, or it is 'suggested', in marketing slogans and campaigns, that we are not normal if we don't hot ourselves up in a certain way by wearing this or that, by applying this or that, or by looking like this or that hyper-sexualised (read: narcissistic) gender archetype.
If people put too much stock in the commercial conception of ‘normal’ as narcissistic and hyper-sexual then this can be a breeding ground for insecurity, depression, and anxiety.
11 December 2008
The orthodox explanation for this alcohol-linked violence is that there is an underlying problem with Australia's drinking culture. In the face of liberal licensing conditions, we seem unable to control ourselves. In Finland, a country renowned for heavy drinking, a change in alcohol taxation in 2004 reduced prices and increased alcohol consumption. Evaluations found that the increase in consumption did not result in increased violence. In other cultures, it is not a fait accompli that more drinking results in increased violence.
In Victoria, the main response to alcohol-related violence has been to restrict alcohol supply. Alone, this strategy will miss the point. Violence is a problem with Australian men and their relationship with alcohol. We can rewrite the unwritten rules for drunken comportment and a good place to start is with the figure of the larrikin.
Changing some of these rules will be the most profound thing we can do to change the levels of alcohol-related violence in Victoria, perhaps far more profound than Hummers for the police or changing the closing hours of Melbourne bars and clubs.
::View Article::
Australian's have enjoyed a drink since long before Ned Kelly donned a helmet and Burke and Wills led an expedition. Aggressive alcohol related violence is relatively high at the moment in places around the country, not because of access to drink. It's because of certain values which too many drinkers hold.
The above article is good because it suggests that the violence becoming all-too characteristic of Melbourne's night life, for example, is caused by intangible 'things' like opinions and mental associations rather than the volume of alcohol being consumed or the degree of police presence on the streets.
According to the article, alcohol companies are employing marketing campaigns whereby the brand names of popular drinks are directly associated with contemporary 'examples' of the Australian cultural archetype of the larrikin - people who do, or who are perceived as doing, what they want when they want. If we want to curb the violence then we have to address these values which operate on a societal/collective level.
07 December 2008
JOHN Brumby has declared war on the "me" generation of out-of-control young Victorians who lack respect and fuel crime.
Mr Brumby's strategy will dominate the Government's social agenda next year.
A round table of experts and parents will meet to carve out a way to teach the young right from wrong.
Education ministers today are expected to declare a shared goal in Australia of better values among the young.
::View Article::
This will be interesting.
Communities, or a group of people bound by some sort of consensus, definitely need to address the content of their values. Values are those intangible, though important, things which link a community together to varying degrees in that people share some goal(s). The individual, the collective, material wealth, some religion or another, sport, pleasure, work etc can all become things that are valued by a society/community. The individual can benefit from valuing the collective and the collective can benefit from value being placed on the individual - so it’s very dynamic and not so clear cut.
It will be interesting to see whether Victorians and then Australians are able to reach a consensus on what values should be promoted to our youth. We live in a liberal, multicultural society: two social ideas which are not exactly allies to notions like 'shared goals' and 'common good' - unless what is shared and held in common is the promotion of different views on what is important in life and for society. Quite a confusing situation.
Cases like this, i.e. youth violence/superfluous individualism, only begin to highlight the importance of consensus in a community. War torn regions like Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo drive the point home.
It's interesting to witness the paradoxes developing in large modern nations: how to maintain some low level consensus (order) in the face of ideologies like liberalism and multiculturalism which promote division.
06 December 2008
THE Victorian Government has all but given up on a long-standing pledge to contain Melbourne's urban sprawl, announcing another big expansion of the metropolitan boundary for new housing.
Six years after setting a "clear boundary" for the city in the Melbourne 2030 policy, the Government has succumbed to a booming population, a housing shortage and resistance to high-density development in established suburbs.
A separate analysis predicted that Victoria's population would grow by more than 40 per cent by 2036, with Melbourne alone adding 1.8 million people — nearly twice the number forecast in Melbourne 2030.
::View Article::
Even though it is three days old this is important news for Victoria. Why? Because it's evidence that despite spots of attention given to issues of sustainability here and there we have little control over our future in the face of the contemporary religions of growth and materialism. The population is growing with no end in sight and too many of us want the McMansion and the large block. Significant population growth, and the materialism championed by this population, represent human ideas which do not seem to correspond to a reality defined by finite resources and interconnected, dynamic eco-systems:
Just two days after the Brumby Government announced an extension of Melbourne's urban boundaries, the state-appointed Sustainability Commissioner has warned of serious environmental damage on the city fringes and called for the boundaries to be fixed.
Five years in the making and the first of its kind, the mammoth State of the Environment report by Sustainability Commissioner Ian McPhail also boldly contradicts other aspects of State Government policy.
It slammed Victoria's emission reduction policies as being too weak and peripheral, while the "ecological footprint" of the average Victorian was calculated as being three times bigger than the world average.
::View Article::
Enough generalising:
With more than half the state's vegetation already cleared and a further 4000 hectares disappearing each year, the state is described as the most cleared in Australia.
Yesterday's report said 75 species had become extinct from Victoria and a further 935 were rare or threatened.
::View Article::
No surprise here, surely. We might leave pockets of land uncleared in our rush to create land for housing and farming but this simply dices up wildlife habitats which need to be connected. Nature is not a collection of little isolated 'zoo's' dotted here and there but rather large, interconnected eco-system(s).
The State Government's tactic of withholding environmental flows from rivers to secure drinking supplies was putting river health at "serious risk", according to yesterday's State of the Environment report.
::View Article::
There are so many of us consuming water at such a rate and with so much wastage that our traditional water catchments and dams are becoming insufficient to meet demand. Thus we degrade more eco-systems (namely ones based around and dependent on rivers) by draining their lifeblood, sending it it via flows and pipes down to a thirsty city and surrounding suburbia. Creating dependency on rivers for our drinking water supplies is not smart if this contributes to their eventual demise.
A step change increase in the provision of public transport services is required, particularly in outer suburbs, to drive a shift from private vehicles," Dr McPhail says in his report.
Metropolitan Melbourne stopped (building new) public transport in the 1950s, when cheap motor vehicles and cheap petrol became available," Dr McPhail said.
::View Article::
Our dedication to lavish suburban living is pushing the geographical boundaries of suburbia outwards all the time, meaning that more and more people need to drive to get to key central locations like the city. This is causing more pollution, road congestion, and stress.
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This is a brief summary of the news surrounding the report and its findings: that Victorians are slowly but surely grinding down 'their' environment. Now why should we all, from environmentalists to industry leaders, care?
The Government was urged to accept that natural systems were the cornerstone of a strong economy, and was warned that Victoria's wealth would eventually suffer if the degradation of rivers and land continued.
::View Article::
Like the economic-centric argument which holds that a prosperous economy is essential to everyone regardless of whether your an ambitious capitalist or not, in that even artists, humanists, sports people (or any group) could not do what they do without an operational economy, the environment would seem to take an even more fundamental place in such reasoning.
The environment lies at the heart of the economy. If economics is essential to a multi-faceted liberal society then the environment is fundamental.
03 December 2008
The Federal Government has confirmed that a boat carrying 35 passengers and five crew has been intercepted off the coast of Western Australia.
The boat was spotted by a surveillance plane yesterday afternoon near Ashmore Island, and then intercepted by the Border Protection Command.
The Government says those on board will now be transferred to Christmas Island to be detained and processed.
::View Article::
We don't need to lock these human beings up for large periods of time without explanation or concern. However we do need to intercept them and send out the message to people smugglers and those considering coming here that we will determine our immigration intake and not vice versa.
At leat, we do if we don't want a situation developing in which naturally ambitious poor and struggling people from Asia and beyond, but also those who smuggle them, begin to get the impression that Australia would be a nice country to get to with our 'wealth for toil', relative national harmony, and generous welfare system.
Why? Well it has nothing to do with ethnic, class or political superiority. It's simply about the numbers. Asia, that large continent that we are separated from by a small stretch of water, has a population of around 4 billion (thousand million) people. According to World Bank Data the percentage of people living below the poverty line in Southern Asia is 30.84%. China alone has a population of over 1.3 billion people and about 28% live below the poverty line. India has a population of over 1.1 billion people of which 42.68% exist below the poverty line...
Australia itself has a population of just under 21 and a half million people and we are struggling to supply basics like water and housing as it is.
Now obviously all of these people would not automatically pile into rickety boats and make for main land Australia if we ceased to deliver the message that we care about border protection and domestic population issues, but more would and this could well represent a huge amount of people.
30 November 2008
"But now the Federal Government's great broadband gift is floundering in the waves of the financial crisis and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is pushing ahead with an internet filter that will dramatically slow Australian internet speeds.
The biggest problem is a little word that Mr Conroy slipped out in the middle of a Senate committee hearing. The pilot filter program will not only target the existing blacklisted sites, most of which are child pornography, but will also target "unwanted" content, whatever that means.
It's a bit embarrassing that we're discussing censoring the internet at all. What does it say about Australian politics that the reaction of both major parties to such a liberating technology is to demagogue about its dangers? Our politicians rave about evils online more than any other liberal democracy. As a consequence, the Federal Government's proposal is far more extensive than any other internet censorship scheme outside the totalitarian world."
::View Article::
As this article points out politicians harp on to un-proportional degrees about the negatives of the internet, i.e. child pornography, in order to scare us into giving them more control of the internet. Whenever the possibility of the government controlled filter blocking legal material is raised, the discussion is directed back to child porn.
What does Senator Conroy mean when he says that the internet filter will block 'unwanted' content in addition to (already) illegal material? Who will decide what content/information is unwanted?
On a broader level, why do we need the government to increasingly direct our behaviour in new spheres of life such as the net? Is it because we don't have the community bonds (i.e. consensus/values) which might better promote the avoidance of child pornography, sites on anorexia, and other material the government is sighting in order to worry us?
30 November 2008
"The Productivity Commission has recommended a taxpayer-funded scheme that would provide 18 weeks' paid leave at the adult minimum wage of $544 a week, costing the federal budget about $450 million a year and businesses $74 million in extra superannuation payments.
In a draft report, the commission argues that such a scheme would "yield community-wide gains in the long term", including better child and maternal welfare, greater workforce participation by women, and improved work-family balance and gender equity.
Although Labor has talked up the prospect of a scheme for years, it is now signalling that the policy could be dumped or shelved because of the financial crisis."
::View Article::
No doubt the Productivity Commission recommended the scheme which the government now seems likely to sideline, because the benefits outweigh the costs.
The benefits are two sided. On one hand working mothers themselves will be able to spend more crucial time looking after their new born children. This could only increase child mental and emotional well-being which would mean less government resources going towards such areas.
On the other hand mothers who have had suitable time away from work after giving birth will still have a job, and won’t be unemployed. This will boost economic activity and all the tax and other benefits to the government that go along with economic activity. Under the current situation that delivers no significant amount of government funded paid maternity leave, potential mothers often have to leave their jobs completely in order to give birth and look after their new-born:
"The report on global gender equity, released last week by the World Economic Forum, shows Australian women are the most educated in the world — ranking equal No.1 alongside Norway, Finland, Denmark, France, New Zealand and the US — but are ranked 40th in terms of female participation in paid work."
::View Article:
26 November 2008
"Sexpo is the third biggest annual Victorian show behind the Royal Show and the Home Show. It attracted 70,000 visitors at the weekend. Sexpo, (or as my mate Dan calls it, Christmas For Perverts) originated in Melbourne 12 years ago. Our licence plates should say Victoria: Home of Sexpo. Or Victoria: A proud porn-loving community. Or perhaps, Victoria: We're gagging for it.
The commodification of sex is depressing. Capitalism cultivates dissatisfaction. Sex sells by making us feel there is some sexual nirvana available that we could experience if only we had the right outfit, toy, partner or lube.
The only other expo I've been to this year was The Bridal Expo. Both struck me as advertisements for some ultimate experience that didn't exist. Which won't stop us searching, feeling dissatisfied or wondering if we're getting enough."
::View Article::
It might be unfair to say that Capitalism, or more precisely our consumer culture, cultivates "dissatisfaction". That's a value judgement I'll leave to the individual. However consumerism does cultivate desire. Our society is filled with marketing campaigns alerting us to the existence of new products and often their social status in the hope we will develop the need, not harboured before hand, to buy them.
So what? Well the society-wide cultivation of desire, now penetrating into the realm of sex, is not necessarily as hot as might be thought. It might be good for overall economic activity, but not necessarily overall wellbeing. To quote the 19th century Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, "All willing (desiring) arises from need, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering". Translation: more desires = more feelings that something is lacking in life.
The sex industry seeks to inflame our desires by making us feel that toys, outfits, porn, other products are needed for a fulfilling sex life when in fact most of us need just a partner we love and are attracted to.
24 November 2008
The need to maximise the growth of the economy seems to be perceived as a self-evident truth in Australia. We don't just want a dynamic and well-oiled economy, we want one that is at all times getting bigger and bigger. At the 2020 summit held earlier this year, 1000 of our best and brightest got together to discuss the nation's future. A key topic was how to 'maximise economy growth'. Ross Gittens from The Age reports.
"[One] of the summit's blinding insights was that "Australia should be the best place in the world to live and do business" which would require "urgent action to increase economic capacity".
::View Article::
It's obviously being assumed here that the size of the economy and amount of economic activity determines whether a certain place is the best one in which to live.
Is this true?
"What we are looking at here is a period when immigration numbers have been really very high and population growth been quite sharp. Like in 2002 the population grew by 237,000. In 2007 it grew by 332,000."
"So it has really grown quite fast and that is fast enough for people to actually see the effects of it. Especially in pressure points like Sydney and Melbourne, where most of the migrants go."
"What happens is that people in Sydney are moving out at a much higher rate than they are from Melbourne and the reason for that is the high cost of housing as far as we can see," she said.
"It is quite unusual that opposition to the immigration intake should rise during a period that was economically rosy, because you have to remember the people responded to this in late November and early December last year."
::View Article::
Far from indicating that the worship of economic growth is making us happier one symptom of this worship, booming immigration, is making us move due to population congestion and housing shortages.
Another way we can maximise economic growth is by working more again. But is does this represent a higher quality of life?
"Then there's the changed attitude to leisure. For 100 years to the beginning of the 1980s, falling working hours - from the 44-hour week to the 38-hour week - were regarded as a sign of social progress. We were happy to take part of our greater productivity in higher incomes and part in more leisure. Yet all that has changed."
::View Article::
We are becoming more economically productive due to better technology and production methods which is great, but instead of using this as an opportunity to enjoy non-working life a bit more we're using the surplus in time and money to propel production further. But for what? Is the economy simply a means to an end or is it everything?
We're even extending the strange quantity over quality mindset into the realm of the arts:
"Even the summit's creativity stream fell into the economy trap: "We will aim to double cultural output by 2020," it concluded, as if the quantity of artistic product trumps its ability to stir our passions or let us see into the human condition. The Government was urged to "recognise the centrality of the arts and creativity to the whole economy"."
::View Article::
Will the arts now have to be justified in terms of their contribution to growing the economy? Will we axe them if they are not 'efficient' enough?
21 November 2008
"Despite continually proclaiming the importance of educating young Australians, our political leaders all seem to have overlooked the fact that today is World Philosophy Day. It is a day we should not allow to pass unmarked.
Given Prime Minister Rudd's call for a responsible and egalitarian future, what is our Labor Government doing to promote World Philosophy Day and the importance of philosophy in the lives of every Australian?
I think we've reached a critical mass. My suggestion is that today, our political leaders, and indeed all Australians, should read the UNESCO study,
Philosophy: A School of Freedom, and make an immediate long term commitment to encouraging our children to be curious and to think critically."
::View Article::
We live in a democracy and we pride ourselves on being a young and, most importantly, 'free' nation. But surely 'freedom' entails the ability to be able to think critically and objectively.
True freedom is considering all the alternatives for oneself and then decide upon a course of action as an autonomous agent. It's not simply doing what everyone else does because everyone else is doing it. It's not voting a certain way simply because one's parents do it. It's not leading a certain life simply because it's glorified by television and marketing empires. All these are not examples of freedom because the motivations are coming more from outside rather than from within.
Philosophy is not simply theology or the study of different ideologies. It is the study of the logic and the reasons behind different assertions and it helps one develop the ability to analyse other people's arguments, consider different modes of society, and generally be more of a 'free' agent in the world.
19 November 2008
"AUSTRALIA and China will accelerate negotiations to clinch a free trade agreement to stimulate their economies in the face of the global economic crisis.
Speaking in Washington after a meeting with Chinese president Hu Jintao, Mr Rudd nominated increased trade and fiscal stimulation as key weapons in the fight against the crisis, which began on credit and stock markets but now threatens jobs and has plunged much of the world into, or near to, recession.
"We have great interest to greater access to China's market in goods and in services.""
::View Article::
On one hand free trade with China might stimulate our economy, but at the same time it might contribute to a decline in jobs and conditions here in Australia.
As taxes on imported goods and services from China are removed it becomes cheaper for an Australian business or company (or even consumer) to buy these foreign products instead of buying Australian equivalents, because they are often produced under lower pay and working conditions (and hence are offered at a lower price). The result is often Australian jobs like manufacturing disappearing. The only way Australian producers can compete is by lowering domestic wages and working conditions (leave/breaks/safety etc).
Free trade generally makes our economy dependent upon the import of cheap products that we can't compete with, and reduces things to the lowest denominator.
18 November 2008
"AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.
The plan was first created as a way to combat child pornography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.
Mr Conroy said trials were yet to be carried out, but "we are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material."
::View Article::
'Illegal'? That's a subjective value judgement. Even at this early stage is looks suspicious. Child porn, fine, but euthanasia (an issue surrounding the control over something as fundamental as one's own life span)?
Anyway, who will decide what constitutes 'illegal' material? The Government, of course. But simply because the government is democratically elected does not mean this internet censorship plan will turn slowly turn into something other than arbitrary intrusion. Democracy is seeing power become increasingly delivered to central authorities behind the smokescreen of all the elections and 'unique' candidates.
17 November 2008
"Neighbours and Home and Away have been branded racist for consistently failing to feature families from ethnic minorities.
Now academics and politicians fear that international viewers could get the "wrong impression" about Australia.
University of Queensland Aboriginal studies lecturer Sam Watson said the dramas were operating an "exclusive white family club" that didn't reflect Australia's true demographic."
::View Article::
Last time I looked, Neighbours and Home and Away were not bastions of reality! If they are representing the nation to other countries, then I think i'm moving to New Zealand.
If I were Asian, Greek, or Aboriginal I wouldn't want my ethnicity represented by Home & Away: It sure wouldn't be multiculture anyway :p
15 November 2008
"ANTI-poverty campaigner Sir Bob Geldof charged $100,000 to come to Melbourne and give a speech about world suffering.
Geldof, 54, spoke about the tragedy of Third World poverty and the failure of governments to combat the crisis, at a Crown casino function on Thursday night.
But the Herald Sun can reveal the outspoken human rights activist charged about $100,000 for his trouble -- a speaker's fee that included the cost of luxury hotel rooms and first-class airfares. Fellow activist the Rev Tim Costello, World Vision's CEO, spoke for free. An event insider said the Geldof payments included the costs of a minder."
::View Article::
Assuming this is true, I wonder what that $100,000 could have done if it was used for something other than symbolism.
Charity too often seems to me to be all about ego and appearances rather than reality: Be seen associating with the right group, buy a 'make poverty history' wristband, and compete with other people for social status. All the while problems in poverty stricken, war torn nations escalate because throwing money at them is not the solution.
How about addressing overpopulation, for starters?
14 November 2008
"KEVIN RUDD will cash in on his first anniversary as Prime Minister by hosting a Labor fund-raiser likely to be one of the largest and most lucrative in Australian political history.
Hundreds of lobbyists, business figures and true believers have been sent invitations offering the chance to secure a 10-seat table, with a federal minister in attendance, for $15,000. Tables with no minister are going for $5000. Sources say that, assuming most Labor ministers attend, and the convention centre's Bayside Grand Hall is filled to capacity with 1550 guests, the event could gross more than $1 million, making it one of the biggest political fund-raising dinners in Australia.
It comes after a warning from Mr Rudd this year: "You don't want democracy for sale." Referring to recent election campaigns in the United States that have cost more than $US1 billion ($1.5 billion), Mr Rudd said some democracies had reached the stage with political fund-raising at which "you've got to say, 'Oops, I think this has actually gone too far."'
::View Article::
Those who think that democracy is the one shining beacon in the midst of political darkness need go no further than this dinner. Leaders depend on lobby groups for financial clout and then sway the political climate in a certain direction (favourable to development, for instance) as payment. This mirrors totalitarianism in so far as leaders respond to interest groups rather than the public.
This sort of thing might not be as bad here as in America where leaders are almost totally dependent on lobby groups and political donations (for example to fuel their campaigns) but the difference is simply a matter of degree.
28 October 2008
We're currently undergoing a makeover which includes stamping out some problems related to the Firefox browser and also a general re-design to improve the site's appearance and accessibility in line with its blogging function. We will be back asap!
22 October 2008
"Mr Bartlett told The Australian that calls by the conservation movement to suspend old-growth logging, because of evidence they might be more valuable as carbon sinks, were nonsense.
"If you burn a tree, obviously the carbon is [released]. If you turn it into a coffee table, that carbon is sequestered for life or for a very bloody long time."
::View Article::
Sure, any carbon stored by a tree in its lifetime is not somehow automatically released into the atmosphere when it is simply cut from the ground. However when you cut down some of the oldest and tallest trees in the world, like the ones in Tasmania's old growth forests, you loose some big carbon sequesterers. Replacing them with new smaller and younger trees is obviously not going to be the same.
However not all environmental issues relate back to climate change. The validity of conservation of any sort, flora or fauna, should not simply rest on whether it helps the fight against climate change. Old growth forests in Tasmania represent a beautiful part of our national history and are areas of wilderness that, remarkably these days, still stand. Why not conserve them when so much of our floura has been removed? It's a question of balance. Here are some stats from the Australian Conservation Foundation that are relevant:
"Since European settlement half of Australia's forests and three quarters of its rainforests have been cleared and over 90% of old growth forests have been logged.
113 species of vertebrate forest animals found in forests are formally listed as threatened species on State or Commonwealth threatened species lists. This is over one twentieth of Australia's terrestrial animal species.
Every year the equivalent to 85% of the size of the Australian Capital Territory is logged in Australia's native forests. That's 200,000 hectares, or the equivalent of two million quarter acre suburban household blocks."
::View Article::
21 October 2008
"Australia ranks 20th out of 27 nations for infant mortality and indigenous Australians rate second last.
Youth road deaths are the third highest in the OECD and Australian children are 12 times more likely to live in a jobless household as those in Japan.
In education, Australia performs relatively well but ranks 17 out of 25 nations for the transition between education to employment.
Family relationships are not strong, according to the report."
::View Article::
This is a bit of a follow up post to 'Do Booming Economic Times = Social Success?' because it concerns the well-being of the next generation of Australians in terms other than the purely material or economic.
A big concern of this blog is Australia's perceived tendency to place materialism and economic growth at the forefront of life. Not because of a dogmatic ideological stance against capitalism, modernity or something reactionary like that, but because it is felt that as a nation we all too often take the necessary requirements simply of open-ended economic growth to be the necessary requirements of a prosperous society, and we frame social success purely in terms of material success when the economy, wealth and products are simply means to ends rather than ends in themselves.
God is dead, and we have replaced him as a social ideal with materialism, or something like that. And we are doing this at the expense of the environment, families, liveability, and social cohesion and community sentiment.
19 October 2008
"LIKE most of you, I have come from a family that values hard work and that brought me up to take responsibility and appreciate the importance of enterprise. For generations my father's family worked the land as farmers and many Browns still do. So it's hardly surprising that I believe in markets, competition and rewarding creativity and effort.
But I also know that we do not live by markets alone. I have long understood that markets rely on values that they cannot generate themselves. Values as important as treating people fairly, acting responsibly, co-operating for the benefit of all. And these values that our economy and society need in order to flourish are not born in markets, nor in states.
These values - fairness, stewardship, co-operation - are learned in families, neighbourhoods and communities and developed in the relationships we enjoy as a society."
::View Article::
What a nice surprise to hear a most senior politician recognise that the invisible hand, or the unbridled market, is not enough to secure social prosperity.
The idea of the invisible hand is one in which individuals (buyers and sellers) in pursuit of their own self-interests, i.e. in a free market, tend to maximise the good of the whole more than they do when they restrain self-interest for some sort of 'collective goal'. When each individual in a society maximises revenue for him or her self the total social revenue is maximised: implying that the sum of individual revenue equals the wealth or prosperity of society as a whole.
In fact the free market only maximises the social good if certain other values also exist and are practiced, values which are holistic (i.e. concerned with a realm greater than the individual) as opposed to purely individualistic. A society cannot function on the profit motive alone. It cannot function if citizens are purely self interested and do not share a consensus over anything other than an interest to get as much out of everyone else as is possible: this is actually the seed of the concept of 'corruption'.
I wonder if the above article is anything more than rhetoric, however, as it is out of character for politicians in the modern political climate of Liberalism to champion a particular set of values beyond materialism: even more to encourage their propagation in the places where they "are learned" such as families, neighbourhoods and communities.
16 October 2008
"Of the 600-odd 24-hour drinking licences across Australia, more than 60 per cent of them can be found in this state. More importantly, though, are our soaring alcohol-related crime figures and social costs. In some parts of the city and along the Central Coast, Sunday morning pedestrians require hopscotch skills to negotiate the patties of dried vomit.
The physical toll is more extreme, with rising hospital admissions, increased incidents of glassings and a culture which has barely changed in more than half a century.
Yet the push to bring some form of restraint to our drinking laws is not a new form of wowserism, despite the claims of some critics."
::View Article::
Intelligent regulation, i.e. not the sort that simply creates a dangerous atmosphere of collective annoyance among hordes drunks suddenly locked out of drinking venues at 2 or 3am, might obviously do some good.
But Australians have always, how do you say, been partial to a drink or two. "Girt by sea and pissed by lunchtime", as the saying goes. IN the past we've gone through waves of regulation and de-regulation in response to scenes of binge drinking and intoxication in bars and on the street, as the body of the article sighted above reveals.
It's only now that we're using those 2 or 3 (or 15+) drinks as an excuse to vent our anger, frustration and ego's onto our fellow man. This might reflect either a society less and less happy with itself and its emerging collective goals (materialism, massification, growth, multi-'culturalism'/social division) or a culture of "me, me" individualism of the Corey Worthington sort, or both.
These notions like 'Individualism' and 'social goals' are not tangible. They are not really discussed as social determinants because they cannot be measured and 'distributed' more or less evenly, like wealth, liquor licences, health-care or even aspects of education. But they are notions that must come into play in society because any society always involves some sort of relationship (often a trade-off) between individual ego and the good of the whole/collective, and also some sort of collective orientation or direction, even if it's an unspoken one.
16 October 2008
"Coombabah State School has banned children from playing lunchtime games of rugby league, Aussie Rules and rugby union, as well as soccer and touch football, the Gold Coast Bulletin reports.
"The school has been forced to restrict Year 7 students from taking part in contact sports following a number of recent incidents that have escalated into fights.""
::View Article::
Yawn. What about getting a staff member outside each lunch time to supervise the kids and keep some order so that the games can continue? I thought we were experiencing a child obesity epidemic, or something.
15 October 2008
"EDUCATION chiefs are "significantly concerned" about the rising "inappropriate sexual behaviour" of primary school students in Adelaide.
The offences include rape, attempted rape, unlawful sexual intercourse and indecent assault.
Education Minister Jane Lomax - Smith said data revealed a "very serious" trend, with today's students increasingly exposed to inappropriate forms of media."
::View Article::
This is no doubt at least partly the result of the sexualisation of children that takes place in the media, the music industry, and the fashion industry, to name a few places.
Industry has always capitalised on the creation of need: your need to look stylish in these shoes, to feel comfortable in this couch, and trendy in this car, etc. Economic models and the public might think that 'consumers' drive the demand for goods and services rather than the producers and sellers of those goods and services, but it is in fact a two way street. Consumers demand things, but firms and industry also spend tumultuous amounts of money on sophisticated, psychology based, marketing strategies. This is the creation of demand.
Now it's pretty clear that the media, music and fashion industries are contributing to the sexualising of children at a younger and younger age by producing and marketing things like suggestive clothes and erotic music videos and performers to young people. This reflects the belief, found so often in Australian society, that society is at the service of business and not the other way around.
Framing relationships and sex purely in terms of individual satisfaction in society probably doesn't help either, as it promotes the idea that other people are always simply means to very introverted, personal ends.
14 October 2008
"Since 1899, Denmark has gradually developed a system that combines the best features of the free market and the welfare state, providing business with very flexible rules and a well-trained workforce, and workers with income security and a high standard of living.
They call it "flexicurity". It's not perfect, but it shows us how to avoid the pathetic situation in which Australia was being held back by skills shortages while half a million young Australians were in neither full-time work nor full-time study.
When you lose your job, you are immediately eligible for government-financed retraining or education to help you equip yourself for a new job. In 2006, roughly 50,000 unemployed people went through training programs, and employers and unions have signed a new agreement to give employed workers the right to leave their job temporarily on 85% pay to undertake relevant training.
Denmark's system works, Fredericksen says, because it tries to protect incomes, not jobs. "We can't guarantee that your job will continue to exist," he says, "but we can say that if people lose their jobs they don't have to lose their house and home - and we will help upgrade their qualifications so they can meet the demands of new jobs."
::View Article::
In other words the welfare state in Denmark avoids giving handouts to its jobless and unskilled citizens without doing something pro-active like re-training them, avoiding a situation which inevitably encourages apathy and also the purely economic need to import hordes of workers from overseas via immigration, as is currently the case in Australia. This simply divides society along the lines of ethnicity and additionally relegates, in terms of importance, the nation's pre-existing citizen body below the level of abstract short term economic productivity.
In Denmark welfare support for the jobless is not simply delivered in the form of money but also retraining. Thus it's not about reinforcing failure, or providing people with a mere means of subsistence while politicians forget them and replace them with immigrants, but rather the facilitation of holistic nation-focused change.
11 October 2008
"One of the Garnaut report's themes is that Australia's burden in climate change mitigation must take into account its growing population from immigration.
It reflects a bipartisan choice for Australia: to ensure its climate change policy is integrated into an expanding population. This is pivotal because, sooner or later (probably sooner), the anti-migration wing of the green-scientific lobby will renew its drumbeat for a smaller population by invoking climate change. Watch for the signal from Tim Flannery, whose anti-migration views are a bellwether of populist green extremism."
::View Article::
I'm no part of any 'green-scientific lobby', but I can't see how reducing carbon emissions doesn't contradict the separate pursuit of expanding our national population, at least not in the short to medium term. Carbon emissions come from the likes of power plants, cars and livestock. Cutting down trees contributes to the amount of carbon floating around because trees absorb the carbon: less trees = more carbon and more climate change. Now, more people obviously means more demand for power, cars, food, and land for dwellings and agriculture (less trees). So then doesn't more people mean more carbon pollution?
""It should be no surprise that Australia's greenhouse gas emissions rose 2% last year and the rate is increasing. Separately reported a few days earlier was the rapid rise in Australia's population, which grew more than 1.7% in the last year. This indicates that 85% of the increase in this nation's emissions relate to population increase and 15% to increase in per capita emissions", said Dr Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australia, today."
::View Article::
This suggests that the nation's carbon emissions are currently determined most by the number of people living on the continent rather than by the manner in which they live (i.e. how much carbon is emitted per person due to how much energy each person uses). So much for green light bulbs.
The only way population expansion can be anything but contradictory to the goal of reducing carbon emissions is if our lives, and the lives of newcomers, become completely carbon-free, i.e., if things like power plants and cars become completely 'clean': a huge task.
09 October 2008
"In an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph today Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Australia's economy was not immune to the global financial crisis, but was coping well so far.
He also took the opportunity to defend his decision not to pressure banks to pass on official interest rate cuts by the Reserve Bank in full.
"The reality is, in the middle of a global financial crisis it is my job as Prime Minister to defend the stability of the financial system because it is mums and dads and small businesses that benefit most from a strong and stable financial system," he said."
::View Article::
It's hard to say who benefits most from a strong financial system, 'ordinary' working men and women with families or those who own and run the various institutions in the financial system like banks and non-bank lenders etc. We do hear this sort of thing from politicians all the time though: "do this or that, because it's in the best interests of the economy, and thus in the best interests "of working mums and dads".
But how closely aligned, exactly, is the well being of an abstraction like the economy with the well being and happiness of flesh and blood human beings, real families and grass-roots communities? A recent book by Australian historian and former academic David Potts called The Myth of the Great Depression offers some interesting thoughts on the topic:
"It turns out that large numbers of those who experienced the 1930s Depression spoke about the time with great affection, claiming that the struggle gave their life meaning. Many even suggested people were happier then.
Potts doesn't deny that some suffering occurred, but it wasn't universal by any means. In any case, the research showed no long-term negative impacts on those who lived through the Depression.
Compared with the previous decade, the 1930s Depression saw unemployment leap threefold and bankruptcy double. Yet the overall health of the nation actually improved and malnutrition declined. What's more, infant mortality, general death rates and suicide fell as the Depression deepened.
Financial and material scarcity appears not to have led to widespread suffering but rather to greater community interaction, increased egalitarianism, a heightened sense of purpose through resourcefulness and, most surprisingly, enhanced overall wellbeing."
::View Article::
'Risking our Kids', a documentary aired on ABC on Tuesday night, was also extremely informative. The focus of the show was child health expert and former Australian of the year Professor Fiona Stanley who heads up The Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. The multi-disciplinary institute looks at how the next generation are raised in Australia and the effects of this on their physical and mental health. It is beginning to find that despite increasing affluence in our society, many health problems more often associated with adults are now being seen in alarming numbers in young children.
::View Documentary::
Professor Stanley reports that the most common health problem in young people today is depression, that the rate of adolescent male suicides has "quadrupled", and that 1 in 7 young Australians now have mental health problems which are serious enough to effect their daily lives.
1 in 4 Australian kids are apparently currently overweight or obese with type 2 diabetes, which was never a children disease, "rocketing up".
1 in 4 four children aged twelve to fifteen currently consume alcohol weekly, with 40 per cent of teenagers being supplied by their parents.
Of particular interest are the reported findings from studies being done in affluent suburbs in Western Australia: 2 in 5 five year-olds are deemed not up to the developmental level required to start school due to insufficient social development, communication abilities and physical health and wellbeing. Linked to this are findings of high levels of post natal depression among local mothers because of a lack of community resources and isolation from neighbours. Parents with affluent professions are not only shut up in their McMansions but also lack appropriate knowledge about child development, leaving them with no understanding regarding the needs of their children. The fact that Australia is only one of a few OECD countries yet to implement paid parental leave is also sighted as a significant concern.
Next time a politician tells you that your interests are bound to economic growth and economic 'prosperity' (read: materialism), don't take it for granted. Bear in mind that in any healthy society materialism is seen as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
05 October 2008
"Consider the union reaction to the Rudd Government's education revolution outlined last month by the Prime Minister and his deputy, Education Minister Julia Gillard. Reforms to make education more transparent by mandatory reporting of student results, allowing parents to compare school performance? Opposed by unions. Transparency and accountability reforms that will enable the most disadvantaged schools to be identified and receive extra funding of $500,000 for your average school so that they may improve? Opposed by unions. Moves to give greater autonomy and flexibility for principals to hire staff? Opposed by unions. Moves to introduce performance-based pay for teachers to encourage better teachers? Opposed by unions. Moves to introduce a national curriculum so that students moving between states and territories can access a seamless education system? Opposed by unions. Queensland Teachers Union boss Steve Ryan summed up the reforms as "beyond insulting".
It's not news that teachers unions remain the single biggest hurdle to improving public education in Australia. They are wedded to an archaic public system that has long protected teachers, not promoted the interests of students. What is news is a federal Labor government is apparently willing to tackle the union influence that has long infected state and federal politics. The Howard government talked about reforming public education but achieved very little.
So it was powerful symbolism and pragmatic politics for Gillard, from Labor's left faction, to pose the killer question to union critics: "I cannot understand why public institutions such as schools should not be accountable to the community that funds their salaries and running costs." If any other group, drawing on the public purse, were exempt from disclosure and accountability, union activists would be the first to cry foul, demanding to know what was being hidden from the taxpaying public."
::View Article::
Unions can act as vehicles allowing individual workers without much bargaining power to gather together and negotiate as a collective. This has both positive and negative effects. Employers finds it harder to exploit workers and society does not descent so easily into a two tier system comprised of a manipulating upper class on the one hand and a permanently exploited, animal like underclass on the other who's constituents never have a hope of affording the environmental factors, for example good education, which might allow some of them to realise their full potential and rise up out of the lower class.
However unions can also provide a platform for the type of herd instinct which protects mediocrity. If it is true that the teachers unions in Australia are the main barriers to improving public schools or at least maintaining public schools at a high standard, then they are one of the key causes of public schools increasingly loosing children to private schools and the associated shift in government focus towards private funding.
01 October 2008
"Professor Garnaut reiterated his controversial recommendation that Australia aim for emissions cuts by 2020 of between 5 and 25 per cent, depending on the scope of the international agreement. Modelling conducted by Treasury for the Garnaut review found that an emissions trading scheme starting with a carbon price of $20 a tonne would result in a one-off increase in inflation of about 1per cent.
By 2020, household incomes would be only 2 per cent lower than they would have been without an emissions trading scheme, with the biggest impact coming from electricity prices, which would be between 21 and 37 per cent higher by 2020 than if an emissions trading scheme had not forced massive restructuring in the electricity sector.
But the overall economic impact would still be significant, shaving about 0.2 per cent a year from Australia's average annual economic growth through to 2020, with annual growth predicted to be around 2.5 per cent.
And Australia had more riding on a successful outcome than most countries, because even small rises in temperature could cause massive damage, such as rendering the Murray-Darling foodbowl barren and destroying the Great Barrier Reef, and because Australia stood to do "relatively well" in a carbon-constrained world."
::View Article::
According to the professor, warnings of economic disaster largely represent scaremongering by business and industry heads as they look to maximise profits rather than consider the national interest. Sounds about right.
A promising feature of this report, perhaps, is that it takes an appropriate middle ground. It does not embrace calls from green groups to set a fixed and absolute reduction target for carbon emissions of 25 per cent by 2020, which is at the upper end of considerations, but rather a flexible target of between 5 and 25 per cent by 2020, depending on the scope of the international agreement. This displays some realism and logic...
Australia emits something like only 1.4 per cent of global carbon emissions. This means we cannot go it alone. A reduction target at the upper end, i.e. 25 per cent by 2020, without key players like the US, China, etc also taking on measures to reduce their own emissions, would mean a bigger toll to the Australian economy for nothing. Australia reducing its measly 1.4 per cent of global emissions by 25 per cent by 2020, with massive economies like the US and China maintaining a 'business as usual' attitude, will do very little to avert global warming and would represent the nation simply taking the moral high ground to feel better about itself without the actual problem being addressed realistically.
Neither does professor Garnaut's report advocate the 'business as usual' position of doing nothing until other global players do something first. This line of reasoning, if held by all global players, will see nothing get started while eco-systems in Australia such as the Great Barrier Reef and Murray-Darling basin go under. We have the opportunity to take the initiative and spur economies around the world into both assessing and facing up to the costs of carbon pollution and industrialisation.
30 September 2008
"GRANDPARENTS are the unsung heroes of Australian families and can boost the learning ability of children, a new Federal Government-funded report shows.
She said children aged from three to 19 months had higher learning scores if they were cared for by family and friends - including grandparents - as well as their parents.
"We know from this study how important it is to a child's development to ... spend as much time as possible everyday reading and spending time playing with children"."
::View Article::
More evidence that family members, i.e. real people who have a natural bond to a particular child, are important to that child's development and that young kids need to spend a significant amount of time with people who are genuinely going to interact lovingly and constructively with them.
Parents can only spend so much time interacting with their children each day and this is where extended family and close friends become important: as an extension of the human element offering the child authentic (as opposed to 'professional' or automated) love and guidance.
29 September 2008
"ONE in five Australian mums and dads is unfit to be a parent, according to child-health expert and former Australian of the Year Professor Fiona Stanley.
She says they either lack the means or the life skills to raise children or cannot devote enough time to their kids because of excessive work commitments.
"The fact we don't have maternity leave or parental leave in Australia is just indicative of our lack of valuing of parents," she said."
::View Article::
Australia and the US are the only developed countries which do not legislate for some sort of paid parental leave across the workforce. This means that numerous Aussie parents must juggle professional work and the raising a new human being at the same time, resulting in neglect, basically. Putting a child into day-care from an early age is not some sort of easy solution to this work-family dilemma. The Australian Family Association sights US and UK research confirming that putting infants, or children under 3 years of age, in childcare is likely to be harmful. Evidently parents are usually best at raising their own children.
"[A] report into parental leave, which sets the groundwork for a national scheme, has recommended the Federal Government pay new mothers or fathers for 18 weeks of parental leave.
The inquiry was set up earlier this year by the Rudd Government to examine ways to improve support for parents of newborns. Public hearings have been held around Australia, and hundreds of submissions have been delivered in favour of a national paid scheme.
While most female workers in Australia are entitled to 12 months' unpaid maternity leave, only about 40 per cent have access to paid leave."
::View Article::
Great. Hopefully this recommendation will be heard by government. Australian society is skewed in the wrong direction so long as it places an abstraction like economic productivity ahead of family. This is akin to a drug addict sacrificing long term well-being for short-term gain. Families raise children, i.e. provide love, guidance, and cultivate values better than day-care centres and television can.
26 September 2008
"What on earth do you think you are doing? As a member of the supposed politically apathetic Gen Y, I am being driven to distraction by all of you. Who can blame us for being uninterested in what's going on? If you turn off the radio for two minutes, you come back to discover half the State Government has resigned or there is a new federal Opposition leader, not to mention the sackings, scandals and cabinet leaks.
But that's not what upsets me. It's the character assassination, back-stabbing and obsession with undermining each other that really drives me up the wall. Call me naive, call me idealistic, but what happened to the business of running the country? The hospitals are in a bit of a fix, funding for education is a problem, the state's public transport infrastructure has seen better days and, in case you've missed it, the environment is apparently about to implode. What are you doing? Taking cheap shots at one another. You are all as bad as each other, and the media is hardly blameless either. Does the wealth of the PM or the Opposition Leader have anything to do with how they are running the country? It is more like teen soap opera than Parliament.
In the turmoil of that was my year 12 I considered, albeit fleetingly, the possibility of a career in politics. Thank you for showing me that I made the right decision by staying as far away from that arena as possible. What kind of an institution labels Barnaby Joyce a maverick? I'm not entirely sure of his politics, but can someone explain to me why a politician who makes a decision based on the policy and what is best for his constituents, rather than just toeing the party line, is constantly criticised? If you spent your time and energy, not to mention resources, on actually addressing the problems we have or, heaven forbid, preparing for the future, instead of digging for dirt on your opponents or undermining their character, I could concentrate on something more productive than venting with a Heckler."
::View Article::
I'm sure there has always been tension in politics between the goals of serving society and one's career as a member of a particular party. I'd also bet that this tension is not static and there are times when one takes predominance over the other and vice versa, the current political climate being one in which the introverted mentality of party politics and career interest dwarf the outward looking and holistic mentality of serving in the public interest.
Instances where MP's are freed from the sophistry-confines of party politics to vote on legislation according to the interests of their actual electorate and a more reality-based sense of right and wrong are currently so rare that they have been given a special name: conscience votes.
So what, someone might ask. Well, here we can witness a consequence of all the mudslinging, cheap shots, token-symbolic leadership changes, blame shifting, and media-orientated spin that currently characterises the political scene. Young people, perhaps with an intuitive bullshit detector as yet unsullied by political correctness, are disengaging. At its worst this disengagement will involve future generations thinking less about society and issues that transcend the individual sphere of personal empire. At its best it could involve new ways and mediums of engaging with social issues that are free from the perceptual filters of dogmatic division.
25 September 2008
"In a speech aimed at explaining his rescue package to the American public and convincing Congress to pass the proposal, Mr Bush warned that inaction could wipe out banks, threaten retirement nest eggs, send home values into freefall and foreclosures skyrocketing, and lose millions of jobs.
The Reserve Bank of Australia has welcomed the rescue proposal, saying that rebuilding confidence in the US financial system was important for the Australian economy.
[American] Democrats are worried that the package will merely reward the "cowboy" CEOs whose gambling with credit got the world's finances into the mess in the first place."
::View Article::
If the banking and finance sectors of the US economy become the acknowledged jurisdiction of the public state because of this rescue proposal then this socialism, as it may rightly be labelled, involving as it does the state interfering in otherwise 'free' credit markets, must be symmetrical, or a 'two way street'.
The bail-out must be offered to the financial sector with strings attached: an obligation to have commercial practices regulated by public officials who think of wider social interests and not simply risky short-sighted profiteering that is evidently destructive.
22 September 2008
"Most of the borrowers must have known they had little ability to repay, but still took the loan. Most of the lenders must have known they had poor chances of being repaid, but still made the loan. Both behaved in a way that was anything but rational.
...Because we have Stone Age brains in 21st century skulls. Because the heights of logical deduction of which the most recent, primate part of our brain is capable are usually overridden by the automatic responses of our most primitive, reptilian part and the emotional responses of the early mammalian part.
As if that weren't enough to get us into trouble, our conscious consideration of these matters is led astray by the economists' neoclassical model, founded as it is on the unscientific assumption that humans are "rational" — carefully calculating in all things, in full control of our emotions and utterly uninfluenced by the behaviour of those around us."
::View Article::
This is a weigh in to the debate between 'invisible hand' free market economics and socialism, or between granting primacy in economic matters to the transient whims of an atomised and purely self seeking collection of human beings (the 'invisible hand') or rather a collection of human beings coordinated by some amount of collective wisdom and planning (read: consensus regarding the social 'good').
Free market economics holds that society will be a better place if people involved in economic pursuits remain free to do what they will without the wasteful loss of economic utility generated by regulation or coordination. However as anyone who has glanced at any first year economic textbook will tell you, free-market economics rests on a few underlying assumptions that must be true if the ideology is to live up to its ideals. One of these assumption is that all the people acting purely in their own interests, i.e. with no regard to any set kind of 'whole', are (1) perfectly rational human beings, with (2) access to all relevant information that might inform rational choice.
The recent financial turmoil in the U.S., triggered as it was by the rather irrational lending and borrowing behaviours of both lending firms and borrowing customers, plainly illustrates that human beings are not always perfectly rational. We require the planning capacities of intelligent and holistic minded human beings to lead society and not abstract economic theories based on assumptions about reality which cannot be met.
21 September 2008
"TWO powerful Democrats in the US Congress have expressed reservations over the $US700 billion ($A870 billion) plan US President George W Bush has proposed to rescue the country's beleaguered financial sector.
The top Senate Democrat, majority leader Harry Reid, blamed the crisis on Bush's laissez-faire policies, then called on the president to better explain why such a sweeping program was needed as the country prepared for a presidential vote in less than six weeks.
"It is now self-evident that the Bush administration's extreme hands-off policies have been disastrous,'' Reid said"
::View Article::
This is not simply an instance of party politics hijacking an issue. The Democrats are sceptical of the asymmetrical idea that the financial sector should be left alone from government intervention to enact purely profit maximising business practices like giving out loans to people who are likely to default, but that it should then be bailed out by taxpayer's money (government intervention) when these practices go bad, with no obligation (government regulation) attached that could ensure the financial sector operates as a collection of socially-minded institutions.
"THE Government has already acted on a range of fronts to cushion Australia from the ongoing economic turmoil being experienced overseas, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.
"We have a well-regulated banking system and we're putting in place some further measures to protect people with deposits to ensure that the strength of the regulation here remains."
"The Government's acted on a range of fronts to make sure that our already well-regulated financial markets are the subject of new measures in the face of this global crisis..."
::View Article::
The economic crisis in the U.S. and the subsequent clamouring for government intervention to correct it for the 'public good' shows that institutions like banks are not separate from society, not sectioned off in some isolated purely 'commercial' realm. It seems logical then to coordinate the integration of business and public society on an ongoing basis and not simply when things really hit the fan.
19 September 2008
"SO Dannii Minogue wants to bare her body to the world again in the name of freedom and self-realisation.
The singer and talent show presenter is considering posing nude again for Playboy.
"But it was liberating at the time. I would do it again. If the money was right, then sure," she said."
::View Article::
We see this more and more. Women who say something along the lines of being liberated and 'empowered' by selling their bodies and exposing some skin. But who is really empowered by the spread of this sort of mentality in society, generally? I would think it would be groups like the sex industry and the music industry more than individual girls and women.
I'm not sure liberation comes with the knowledge, closely associated with particular brand names of course, that the concrete way to get ahead as a female is to cater to sexualisation. Perhaps it does in a society that does not regulate commerce with any higher values.
19 September 2008
"Over three decades, the proportion of people who rated state MPs as ethical and honest fell from 21 per cent to 12 per cent, and the equivalent measures for federal MPs were 19 per cent down to 9 per cent. That is, about nine out of 10 voters do not consider politicians to be ethical and honest. This is not healthy for democracy.
One way to try to reverse this trend would be to introduce some form of political consumer protection. In the business and commercial world, consumers are well protected.
There are strict laws, applied by independent authorities, to which we can turn if there is any suggestion of improper practices such as misleading advertising. Yet there is no consumer protection on offer in the political sphere."
::View Article::
There is no obligation placed on politicians to speak the truth because it has been objected that the policing of such an obligation would be open to political manipulation. Concerns about "who exactly would judge what is true or not", or about "who's version of the truth is true?" currently lead us to simply give the good old shrug and fall back on the liberal position that "we'll leave it up to the voters to decide what's true and what's false". How movingly democratic and post-modern.
There are a few problems with this. One is that those voters who actually want to look past the spin and political allegiances and vote with their heads according to actual policies have to wade through piles of bullshit. Political debates slide to the level of rhetoric and become focused on symbols detached from reality, with no way of holding to account those who employ them in this way when they do.
Another is that many people who vote simply do not or cannot determine for themselves what is true and what is merely spin: most people vote merely according to longstanding political allegiances and many people cannot think for themselves.
Groundless spin also turns off intelligent realist sorts of people from politics, disengaging a large slab of the sort of people who we should really want shaping things and leaving even more of politics in the hands of those who don't look past appearances.
16 September 2008
"Women aged 20 to 24 displayed the same level of grit and determination for marriages to succeed as those aged 65 and older. Almost half these 20-something women believe you sign on to one marriage and one marriage only and the only way out is in the back of a hearse. Men under 24 are only slightly less wedded to the concept of marriage forever.
But the "succeed or die trying" brigade drops away markedly to 27 per cent of women aged 35 to 44 and 25 per cent of women 45 to 54, with similar falls for men.
But when a survey as comprehensive as HILDA is telling us our young people often match our retirees when it comes to attitudes about marriage and children, something needs to be done."
::View Article::
Young people are more perceptive than they are often given credit for and are reacting to a period in society that has seen the family defined in terms of the individual rather than the group, giving way to petty squabbles, divorces, broken families, and the emotional pain this has caused them or their friends.
They have been the losers in an era in which their parents increasingly used marriage and children as simply another accessory that could be replaced or discarded upon the onset of difficulty or boredom. Those aged 35-54 were less conservative and more 'Liberal', no doubt because their parents came from a time when the family was not so much at siege from individualism.
Is something wrong, does something need to be done, when social institutions as foundational as marriage and the family are viewed as transient personal liberties or when they are viewed as personal commitments and obligations? While some family break-ups are inevitable and even necessary, and reactionary stigmatisation of divorce is undesirable as it makes life even more difficult for those children who come from broken homes, it is no secret generally that intact families, driven by a goal greater than constant individual gratification on the part of parents, are more healthy environments for children than broken ones.
15 September 2008
"JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: An extraordinary thing happened in the Victorian Parliament this week: party politics was put aside. MPs from opposite sides of the political fence sat together to thrash out an issue that no previous Victorian Parliament has been game to consider: the decriminalisation of abortion.
[...]
In the past 10 years, there have only been three conscience votes. They've dealt with the issues of infertility treatment, human embryos and the rights of people in gay relationships. None of those have gone anywhere near the length this one has. Three days and three nights and that's only in the Lower House.
[...]
JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: The bill passed the Lower House without amendment at 1 am today. It's now moved to the Upper House for MPs to struggle with their conscience. Some hope that the spirit of cooperation of MPs seen this week, might continue through other debates, maybe even Question Time.
[...]
PETER BATCHELOR: There's an improved chance of that happening. It'll happen to a greater degree because of what's occurred this week. Whether that dissipates over time, we will tell. But, I reiterate the point I made at the beginning, Josephine: I've never seen behaviour - such good and productive behaviour in Parliament like we've seen this week."
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Unlike in the U.S., Australian political parties normally require their MP's to vote on pieces of legislation in accordance with the party line as opposed to their own rationality, on pain of reprimand or exclusion. The recent abortion debate in the Lower House of the Victorian Parliament has been an exception to this, allowing members a vote of conscience.
All the politicians effectively agreed upon the need to bypass the 'party politics filter', understanding all too well that it restricts otherwise more free debate by gagging individual MP's from arguing and discussing issues according to one's heart and autonomous sense of objectivity.
Afterwards there was some vague romanticising about the possibility of there being further instances of such behaviour among our leaders and their ministers and less of a tendency for political issues to be debated in the interests of division simply for division's sake and career advancement. Why not grant other issues a similar level of dignity, on the state/territory level and the national level?
14 September 2008
"In fact, as the political becomes ever more personal, it's every news outlet's form of communication. News journalism in all its guises used to be about thrashing out the big issues. But increasingly news and current affairs reporting is less about the large ideas and more and more about the minutiae of the "me" factor.
[...]
...Westacott - and every other news editor - knows that providing your audience with what you think they need to know at the expense of what they want to know is a fast track to ruin. "If you follow the path of providing them simply with what you think they want, you'll lose your audience," he says. "If you simply sit there and lecture and hector, you lose your audience. It's an interesting balance for every news organisation, the balance of information and entertainment and challenging notions. It is a subtle art form."
[...]
"And that's understandable in terms of the economics of the industry," Turner says. "But at its broadest, your democracy is only as strong as the quality of the information that's provided to its citizens." The personalising of everything frequently means the big picture - and the detail - of issues is sidelined.
The last federal budget was a compelling example. Reporting was dominated not by how the overall package might address a tangle of economic and social problems, but by a chorus of disgruntled individuals."
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The more we all individualise our outlooks and view national life exclusively in terms of "how does this affect me?" and "If I personally don't like it, it's evil", the more the media will tailor its news and current affairs analysis in terms of whether some piece of legislation, some ongoing public debate, or some aspect of culture is deemed 'good' or 'bad' by some one individual... anyone. The media is after all in the habit of following what the masses want: profit comes first and current affairs come second.
Consider the issue of means testing that was raised in the last federal budget. Reporting on possible benefits that might have been delivered to society as a whole by the introduction of means testing was clouded by all the reporting on various individuals who, for example, would incur some limited short term financial pain as a result of means testing removing government hand-outs that they might not have needed, relatively speaking, in the first place. Gasp.
By adopting the 'personalised' approach to social issues, considerations as to whether or not an issue might be sensible for the whole will constantly be sidelined in favour of emotion and the depth of our journalism and thinking in all matters social and political will be reduced to "well, Joe Bloggs here doesn't like it, therefore it must be bad".
11 September 2008
"You think we live in a democracy where we choose our leaders? Then wake up and check the leaders of our states and territories.
In fact, six of the eight got their jobs without going to an election. They were picked instead by their party to replace a leader of their own side.
Both parties now realise if they are in power and voters want change, it's better the government offer it, rather than the Opposition...
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Modern democracy stands for playing the blame game and passing the buck, as opposed to responsible and accountable leadership. The sinister element is not really that we don't vote for all these substitute leaders, but rather that governments employ the tactic of changing leaders so that failures can be blamed on that 'other guy' who used to be the leader, taking the focus away from what in the fact the party, as the government, needs to acknowledge, address, and improve. It's simply an exercise in spin.
This 'buck passing' behaviour occurs in multiple levels of our democracy and is not simply exclusive to individual party politics. Take the recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report which found that Australia ranks second last in terms of public education funding compared with other 'developed' nations:
"Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard says the findings show just how much the education system was neglected by the Howard government.
"In early childhood education, Australia comes pretty close to the bottom of the class and this report also confirms that we've been under investing in higher education and vocational education and training," she said.
"It's no wonder with a record like this that the Howard government left us with a skills crisis, and left us with a big job to do to get early childhood education up to world standards."
Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith has rejected Ms Gillard's criticism, saying the Coalition would have spent more if it did not have to pay off debts left by the Labor Party under the Keating government."
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Education is one of the most important contributors to a 'civilised' society - for applied economic and social reasons and also pure knowledge-based, 'enlightenment' reasons - and here we have both sides of government blaming the other for a failure in that area.
The overarching failure however is not one isolated incidence of education funding but a political system and culture which values appearance over reality and spin over accountability. Failure in life is not the act of making a particular mistake. It's the mentality of not acknowledging the mistake and subsequently correcting it.
09 September 2008
"Green groups and the Victorian Opposition have blasted a police plan to put a fleet of black, military-style Hummers on the streets of Melbourne in an effort to combat alcohol-fuelled violence.
"I just don't know that a military vehicle driving through the streets is going to make people feel safer compared to police walking or on bicycles," ACF climate change campaigner Phil Freeman said.
"We have got a serious problem, everybody acknowledges it but rather than putting more police resources onto our streets to deal with the problem of drunken hooligans they're introducing these gimmicks.""
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This is one example of the 'externalities' we will see more and more as Australian society embraces Pluralism and the hostile liberal attitude towards cultural consensus: a military state, not to sound too alarmist. It will involve either police all over the streets in tank like hummer vehicles, on bikes, or on their feet. The common theme however will be the need for the state to increasingly impose itself on day-to-day life because there is no consensus between the public - the people - on how to act and what behaviours are 'good' and 'bad', spawning various sorts of social friction and conflict.
The more the smart people in this country run away out of vague fear from the opportunity to come together to form some sort of consensus on what values we should foster as a joint society, or parallel sets of joint societies if nationwide consensus is not possible, - in schools, politics, the media, business etc - the more restricted life will become for each of us.
Fostering cultural consensus will promote freedom? This might seem paradoxical, but it's not, really. Its just not what we are 'accustomed' to think at present, due to mainstream cultural norms (political correctness might be included here) and a narrowing political spectrum concerned purely with unlimited economic growth and a petty consumerist version of 'choice'.
A society that enjoys consensus in its conceptions of 'good' and 'bad' and agrees on the behaviours needed to realise its particular conceptions (these behaviours being known collectively as 'virtue') does not need to spend as much of it's citizens hard earned money on intervening in their lives to clean up after spates of violence to ensure neighbourhood/civil peace. This is known as society protecting 'negative freedom': merely our freedom from the imposition of others. It is contrasted by them more positive, pro-active conception of freedom which involves some social consensus: 'freedom to...' rather than simply 'freedom from....'
Ultimately we let vague emotional labels such as 'draconianism' and 'totalitarianism' cloud discussions in matters of consensus and positive freedom. But to start down the road of more cultural consensus and positive freedom would not have to involve 'unfairly' imposing one massively arbitrary conception of 'right' and 'wrong' on all of society. It could simply begin by reinvigorating a basic, almost lowest common denominator, set of values that aren't all that contentious but which currently go un-fostered on a social level and are often even beginning to be discouraged by the emerging 'me! me!' religions of consumerism and individualism.
Higher subsequent levels of social consensus, and thus more 'positive freedom', could be realised through all the members of society who possess different values organising themselves around their respective values, which would involve a higher, but not revolutionary, amount of localisation as opposed to the contrary practices of centralisation, massification, and pluralism that are currently driving society into uncharted territory.
08 September 2008
All of the Corrupt tribes view as desirable consensus in matters of values/morality among people living in a certain society/community. The idea of consensus stands opposed to the liberal 'live and let live' mentality which argues that values like 'decency', 'purpose' and 'right/wrong' are not social matters, or matters that concern a collective of people living in relative proximity, but rather strictly private concerns to be determined in individual households, separate from any imposition by the social collective.
The problem with this ultra Liberal view is that everyone reverts into a 'heads-down' private mentality and society, as a collective or 'whole', slowly heads towards the lowest common denominator because there is no quality control that goes higher than the particular whims of a particular individual at a particular time.
This is not to say that individual households are not capable of instilling decency, purpose and conceptions of right/wrong that go higher than the individual, (many are not, but this is not exactly the point), but rather that these sorts of values require not just the efforts of private households in order to stick but the joint collaboration of private individuals with educators, leaders, people in business, idols/heroes... In other words some amount of consensus by an entire collective or society/community.
Let's take a look at today's news in a society going further down the path towards 'live and let live' and away from moral consensus:
"A female police officer has been released from hospital after being kicked in the head during a brawl at a rugby league grand final on the NSW North Coast.
Police say the officer tried to break up a fight between about 10 spectators at the game between the Woolgoolga Seahorses and Orara Valley Axemen at Woolgoolga oval yesterday afternoon.
She dropped her portable radio and was picking it up when she was attacked."
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Again:
"Victorian police will [now] patrol Melbourne's inner-city streets in Hummers to try to curb violence.
The move comes after a 24-year-old Cranbourne man was left on life support after he was knocked unconscious at a Southbank nightclub early on Sunday. Police have charged two men with assault over the incident. The police earlier said the man had died.
Police are also looking at setting up drunk tanks at trouble hot spots, and have promised to crack down on licensed venues that serve intoxicated patrons."
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It's not just our widely reported escalating street violence now telling us that the 'live and let live'/individualist morality position is misguided. We should be suspicious also that no society has ever been produced by an ultra Liberal group of people. Liberalism proper simply pops up in societies that have previously been built through joint conceptions of the common good, i.e. consensus.
The stage of downgrading conceptions like family, civic virtue, and hard work of the sort that actually contributes to the great good, comes about only after society is already ticking along - when we forget about obligation and decide to scramble for what we can simply get out of society, all while being controlled by the misplaced fear that accompanies the notion of a higher degree of social consensus: the fear of being judged.
07 September 2008
"You see, these men were enjoying a healthy dose of b-romance on that Saturday morning. B-romance is the term we coined as we giggled over our lattes watching the boys like they were some sort of circus act. It is the non-gay deep affection that men have for their mates.
Imagine if you and your partner loved all the same things. You are both dying to hang out at the pub, shouting over the top of a pint, talking about only two or three topics, all of which may involve sport and none of them about relationships.
You both love sex and never feel the need to overanalyse it. Outside work, the most pressing issue of your day is what you are going to eat for dinner, and who is going to get it for you.
The most beautiful part of your house is not the front garden - it's the area surrounding the couch. The most horrific thought if you were ever burgled is that the TV and 12 remotes may get taken."
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I know we're living in the age of 'equality' in this country, but does this mean that the notion of the male gender must be levelled down? Is 'male-ness' now to be conceived of in terms of what might be its most ordinary characteristics - sport, beer, sex, food, television - rather than what might be 'its' extra ordinary characteristics - idealism, strength, responsibility, care...?
The culture we live in, which includes the common stereotypes, plays a significant role in forming our perceptions of ourselves as we grow up, and while there is nothing wrong with a bit of hedonism, I think that using it as the basis of what ever 'the' modern Australian male might be is not simply unfairly miss-representing reality, but also setting the bar quite low for future generations of men.
04 September 2008
"KEVIN Rudd will be asked to drastically lift Australia's reserves of natural forests and grasslands as part of its climate change solution in a bid to ease emissions cuts on industry as part of the transition to a low-carbon economy.
The Prime Minister's climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, yesterday urged Australia to lift its focus on retaining natural forests and grasslands in northern Australia as part of its climate change response.
The Australian understands the concept of boosting biosequestration has the support of senior government figures, particularly given its potential to reduce the impact on industry of the Government's carbon reduction measures."
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Increasing the amount of our forests and grasslands that are protected as reserves is obviously a great idea for many reasons, and I doubt many people would disagree. However, purely as a policy response to battle the carbon emissions from an otherwise 'business-as-usual' Australian economy and society, it falls short.
It's like treating the symptoms of a cancer but not the cancer itself, for it ignores the fact that our current consumption and population patterns, globally and not just in Australia, are unsustainable.
Protecting forests that already exist is not going to reduce carbon pollution and the greenhouse effect this pollution fuels rather than simply prevent a bad situation worsening. We would need to embark on a large national tree planting mission to secure any net-benefits. However, any hypothetical net lowering of current rates of carbon pollution would soon be cancelled out via our high levels of population growth fuelling future consumption and thus future carbon pollution.
04 September 2008
"The Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, had flagged Labor's intentions in school education when interviewed on the ABC's Insiders on August 10. She revealed that on a recent visit to the US she had been influenced by the Teach for America program operating in New York. The education minister stated that she wanted to achieve a similar transparency with public and private education in Australia to ensure that "people know everything that there is to know about schools" and "can compare like schools". At the moment state and territory governments, supported by teachers' unions, refuse to provide such material. So it is all but impossible to determine which schools are achieving the best possible results and which are the best managed.
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The reason why conservatives and social democrats have a similar attitude to education reform in Australia results from the fact that they are attempting to resolve a continuing problem. Namely, that the public education system is dominated by public sector unions who have no genuine desire for real education reform. There are many excellent principals and teachers in the government system along with some duds. The former do not need union protection. The latter use the clout that potentially results from collective action to avoid the consequences which flow as a result of incompetence or laziness in most other industries.
The Howard government failed to achieve school education reform because it could not override the state and territory Labor governments which protect the interests of the education unions. Rudd has indicated his intention to succeed at this task. He told The Australian last week that some teachers' unions are "locked into a view of equity which doesn't work". In other words, Rudd and Gillard believe education unions are preventing young Australians from low-income backgrounds from achieving their full potential in society."
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The Labor government is attempting to lame, in order to bypass, one of the worst aspects inherent in any sort of unionism and collectivism: the herd mentality that protects the useless. Education unions currently make it difficult for planners to work out which schools are the ones that are simply not working, the ones which need the attention, so as to protect its members from possibly being identified as incapable or underperforming teachers.
The education of youth is one of the most important jobs in any society, not merely for economic reasons, and it is more than simply a shame that teachers are not looked upon with more esteem in the community and that the teaching profession as a whole is increasingly a 'turn-off' for bright young people choosing a career. The capacity to identify and weed-out genuinely lazy and incompetent teachers can only help elevate the reputation of the profession and also improve the intimidating environment in many schools that turns off prospective teachers.
02 September 2008
"PRIVATE companies will get a greater stake in Victoria's public education system, under a radical State Government shake-up.
[...]
Under the changes, big companies will be asked to play a greater role in public education, "partnering" schools in disadvantaged suburbs and areas with skills shortages.
They will also be asked to assist with financial contributions, student mentoring programs or "in kind" donations such as computers and equipment."
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So, we the public can't provide the resources needed to improve schools, so we'll get big business to do it? Big business has one main interest at the end of the day, and it is certainly not an interest in objective, nihilistic (i.e. value neutral), wide-reaching fact and thinking. It is an interest in the much more partisan and narrow pursuit of making profit.
If we value a wide, objective and rich education for our children we should be wary that this sort of reform could give big business the ability to assert undue influence on the students or curriculum in any school it might be 'supporting'. Students and individual schools might become simply markets for the specific supporting business, and the curriculum might be narrowed state-wide to focus on those conceptions of the world that hold up the value of the share market as the highest collective good in life.
01 September 2008
"PUTTING babies into childcare is a form of abuse, leading children's author Mem Fox claims.
Ms Fox, a children's literacy advocate and author of the best-selling Possum Magic, said she believed society would look back on the trend of allowing babies only a few weeks old to be put into childcare and wonder, "How could we have allowed that child abuse to happen?".
"I just tremble," she said. "I don't know why some people have children at all if they know that they can only take a few weeks off work."
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I do. It's because parents too often want their careers and material standards of living to be the focus of their lives rather than their family. 50 years ago our parents and grandparents were content with going without a new appliance or radio, as they didn't expect so much out of the material side of life.
"Working mothers have criticised Fox's comments, while family groups have offered qualified support.
Australian Family Association spokeswoman Angela Conway said the author's language was too strong, but US and UK research backs her view.
"Large amounts of research are coming in showing that - particularly for children under two, but also under three - child care is generally likely to be harmful to them," Ms Conway said."
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No surprise here, surely? Child care facilities simply cannot provide infants with the affection and care parents naturally give to their own. Nor can child care, to all ages, provide kids with the moral guidance they need to form characters worthy of respect in later years.
Unhappy children, burnt our parents, and broken relationships will become the norm rather than the exception if material standards of living and the rat race continue to dominate our lives. As a nation we're abandoning the family, one of the most important instututions that made civilisation possible, and filling the gap we've left with cheap labour immigration. This says something.
01 September 2008
"ABORIGINAL leaders have sharply rejected outgoing Governor-General Michael Jeffery's claim that the vast majority of indigenous Australians are living "integrated normal" lives, and that disadvantage was confined mostly to remote areas.
Indigenous leader Pat Dodson said the remarks by the head of state were superficial and suggested that all that was needed was to "force these (remote) people out of their communal ways".
"It really denies the uniqueness of who the indigenous people are and what their contribution to this country can be in their own right, as if they have nothing to contribute except the absorption of the culture that the west has offered to us. It's a pretty damnable statement if that's the case."
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Aboriginals don't want to be 'integrated' into mainstream Australian society and become faceless consumers. They want to retain their own values and practices because their indigenous culture provides them with meaning in life.
"We're not living normal lives, we're totally over-represented in the social indicators, we're dying a lot younger, we don't have the education opportunitie ... (people are living) below the poverty line in many parts of Australia, it is not just those in northern Australia who are battling to make ends meet," Mr Dodson said."
While there might possibly be some discrimination at work here, it's evidently not entirely clear that it is possible in the first place for Aboriginals to be fully integrated. Reality sometimes does not reflect moral fantasies: the moral fancy here being that Aboriginals are 100% compatible with the Anglo-Saxon basis of mainstream Australian society, that 'we're all the same in the end, man'. Sorry, we're not, due to tens of thousands of years of evolution in different geographical environments.
31 August 2008
"Maurauding gangs of "Americanised" youth are staging violent pitch battles on the New South Wales-Queensland border, terrorising locals and cutting a swathe of destruction through the premier tourist locale.
The situation has become so bad, local police have called for help from academics to formulate new strategies to deal with the problem.
"We are putting the call out there - why are are our youth going this way?""
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More useless youth crime that has nothing to do with economic disadvantage. Perhaps youths are committing pointless and egotistical crime because we live in a culture that constantly goes on about human 'rights' but goes almost silent when it comes to human 'obligation': 'you have the 'right' to be who you want to be, and to do what you want to do and forget about a public code of ethics because values are purely the 'private' concerns of individual families in their homes, not the concern of schools, the media, or your community.
Even if this were 'true', the amount of time parents actually have access to their children's attention is obviously dwarfed by the amount of time they don't: when youths are at school, watching movies, surfing the internet, and roaming around with their crew on the streets.
27 August 2008
"MORE than two-thirds of working mums would rather be at home with their children, yesterday's Daily Telegraph revealed.
"For most mums it is not an option because they need a job just to make ends meet," the article said.
Not an option? I don't believe that for a minute. Many women don't realise it, but the very simple answer to the question of balance for working mothers is this: be happy with less."
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This is one of the many tales of a materialistic society. The more we choose to base our lives on the rate race, on attaining the flashiest cars, the biggest televisions, the trendiest designer clothes, the less time we have for those things 'oh so old fashioned', but innately valuable, pursuits like raising our children and spending time with those people we call our family members.
We need these old fashioned pursuits, both for the good of our communities and our own well-rounded mental wellbeing. The more we leave our kids to be brought up by day care centre franchises and the mass media because we are too busy working, the more we will be raising dysfunctional, self-centered unattached members of society. The more we skip those opportunities to actually get to know our parents, siblings or children, the more regret we will experience, and the more atomised, neurotic, and self-alienated we will be as human beings.
26 August 2008
"A NORTH Queensland school principal is under pressure to perform a policy backflip after he banned students from doing cartwheels and handstands in the playground.
Belgian Gardens State School in Townsville has banned all gymnastics activities during breaks, claiming it is protecting students from injury.
Mother Kylie Buschgens told The Townsville Bulletin she was dumbfounded when her daughter Cali, 10, was told she could no longer do cartwheels, even on the grass."
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Don't we only learn from falling down? Don't we have a generation of children many of whom are overweight? Don't we, as human beings, have to learn about risk and experience some adventure - which involves some childhood activities which may break a few bones and bruise a few knees?
Hypothetically speaking, a society driven entirely by fear might indeed be 'safer' but it would also be a paranoid, lifeless society. Adventure, new ideas, physical activity: all of these involve 'risk' but are in the long run are beneficial and part of greater whole.
26 August 2008
"TOP university students will be headhunted by the State Government and offered financial incentives to work in Victoria's most challenging schools under a radical plan to tackle underperformance.
University graduates from all courses - not just teaching degrees - will be aggressively recruited, given weeks of intensive training and ongoing mentoring to cope with life in some of the toughest classrooms.
But the plan is likely to prove contentious, with teachers already raising concerns that some university graduates, no matter how successful they are in their fields, may not be cut out for the rigours of teaching in struggling schools."
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Hypothetically speaking this is great. Encourage the 'best' in their fields to use their skills for the widest social benefit.
Practically speaking, however, it sounds like it might run into trouble. Attaining high marks in a university degree does not necessarily mean one will be able to manage children from the Jungles that are Victoria's 'most challenging' schools. We live in a society in which the individualism of children clearly dwarfs that of the past and we have taken away the ability of teachers to be more assertive in maintaining order in the classroom, leading to the many of the problems this plan seeks to solve.
The public teaching profession as a whole needs to be better paid, by us, the taxpayers, so that worsening classroom conditions can be balanced by more financial incentives, encouraging a higher quality of personnel to join and stay in a profession that is growing more challenging and thus less attractive to talented people choosing a career.
22 August 2008
"Earlier this year the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, an acknowledged leader in research into diabetes and obesity and their related complications, such as stroke and heart disease, estimated that 4 million Australians are now obese and another 5 million are sufficiently heavy to be classified as overweight and at risk of joining those classified as obese. It argued the inexorable rise of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease was an indication that this society is effectively gorging itself to death.
The report, commissioned by Diabetes Australia, makes for disturbing reading for all Australians. The cost to the taxpayer of this obesity epidemic in the growing burden on the health system, lost productivity, welfare payments and carers' costs, has all but tripled to more than $58 billion a year, up from $21 billion in 2005. This massive jump reflects the increased incidence of weight-related diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
What is clear from this report, and others, is that as a society we are failing to tackle the expanding obesity problem, and if radical action is not taken soon, it will be to Australia's long-term health and financial cost, as weight-related premature deaths, disability and hospital admissions grow."
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So, each Australian is paying more than $2,762 a year to maintain the unhealthy lifestyles of the overweight.
While the causes of obesity are sometimes psychological, related to deeply ingrained dispositions such as serious depression, and also physiological, generally speaking we need not maintain a culture that allows many people to go about their day comfortable in the knowledge that their poor and un-realistic lifestyles will automatically be supported by the hard work of society when things eventually hit the fan. A culture that always makes everyone pay for the obvious poor choices of individuals is skewed the wrong way.
21 August 2008
"Yet this is the frustrating thing about the F-word today: so much of the feminist debate still assumes that women are powerless. If a man and a woman are in a relationship, then he is in control. If a woman is in a workplace, then she is a target for harassment. If a woman wants a career and children, then she is destined for a life of doing the "double shift". Obviously, you cannot trust men to step up to the plate.
For young women of my generation, the brand of feminism which says that women are disempowered and harassed just doesn't have much resemblance to real life. A quick scan of my friends and colleagues renders the idea that we are all dominated and subordinated by our partners and husbands laughable.
...
But feminism focuses on these facts and says we have not gone far enough. It says that we are still victims, and we will be until women work - and earn - as much as men. We will be victims until every husband does the dishes exactly 50 per cent of the time. And this is where feminism is getting it wrong.
...
We need a new feminism that does not assume that women are victims and does not try to pigeonhole us into one homogenous group. It does not tell us to stay at home, or get to work. It does not focus on workforce participation, or the gender wage-gap, or the average number of hours spent doing housework. The new feminism is about choice."
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One giant and endless battle between the sexes will grant neither males nor females dignity. Demanding that men and women live the exact same, carbon-copied lives simply fuels pointless conflict.
'Equality absolutism' is destructive and deluded: people are simply not all the same.
19 August 2008
"Sleep-deprived teenagers are at greater risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks - and their mobile phones, computer games and iPods could be to blame, research suggests.
A study of teens aged 13 to 16 found those who slept less than 6.5 hours a night were up to three times more likely to have elevated blood pressure.
[...]
"There are teens who text message or listen to music all night, compounded by early school hours. Adolescents need nine hours of sleep," Professor Redline said.
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Fatigue is also implicated in a high proportion of car accidents, workplace injuries and cases of depression."
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Life is about balance. Don't get addicted to gizmos to the point where its taking away from other aspects of life: especially sleep. Sleep is vital for energy, vibrancy, a sense of purpose, and basically, happiness.
Treat your body well: it's better than any drug.
18 August 2008
"'You don't want democracy for sale.' - Kevin Rudd at a March 4, 2008 joint press conference with federal Treasurer Wayne Swan
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Here's a rare look into the shooting gallery. It comes in the form of an offer document to the corporate sector being circulated by Labor HQ in the interests of raising money for the party. And on any measure it's Kevin Rudd who's up for sale.
Under the auspices of the Federal Labor Business Forum here's how that offer goes; it starts with a $15,000 package which entitles two company representatives to meet Labor's "rising stars", attend a three-day retreat to "liaise with the entire ministry, discuss specific issues with ministers in smaller settings, and hear an address from the Prime Minister"."
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Need it be any clearer? Our two major political parties, one of which always becomes the governing body in this nation, are, in a matter of speaking, corrupt. Both (yes even the so called 'labor' party) direct policy in the interests of corporations and other bodies with tens of thousands of dollars to spare for the privilege. You see, the more money one of the major political parties receives for this sort of service, the more it has in the bank to spend on election campaigns and other vehicles of career promotion for its constituents.
The public wastes a significant amount of time exercising its 'democractic rights' by taking up opposing sides on issues that the political parties in cohort with their contributors bring to the table as opposed to those that individual citizens bring to the table. After all, who's going to listen to you, a mere 'citizen', your just a needle in a haystack: so much for modern Democracy.
17 August 2008
"And nowhere is that more true than with the games of the Olympiad, where the obscene cost of broadcast rights means not only charging obscene amounts for advertising spots (hundreds of thousands of dollars in Australia; millions in the US) but cramming as many of them into every hour as possible.
[...]
Television rights have underwritten the Olympics for at least 20 years, and major broadcasters pay highly for the privilege: NBC coughed up almost $US1 billion ($1.12 billion) for the US broadcast rights for Beijing. The Seven Network paid $70 million just to get its cameras into the venues, with the cost of actually broadcasting on top of that (apparently another $20-$30 million).
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And that's what's really disappointing about this year's Olympics coverage. Not that we're exposed to more than 200 hours of advertising during the course of it. But that there's so little in those 200 hours to have us cheering."
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Oh? The commercialism surrounding the Australian broadcasting of these Olympic Games is staggering. I couldn't care less how exciting the content of Olympic advertising on the seven network might be when I'm being treated like an indifferent fool who, it is hoped, will sit through all that is fed to me:
And here's how it seems to go: a large collection of ads, a single race (say an 800 meter track semi final), ads, a jingoistic and crassly sentimental pre-packaged celebration of some Australian medal win a few days ago, ads, the other 800 meter semi final, ads, another pre-packaged collection of replays of 'Australian glory', and the cycle continues, begging the question... are the limited bursts of actual Olympic competition in amongst all this the real focus here?
No. This 'coverage' isn't so much a presentation of the Olympic games itself, i.e. the privilege to see competition between the world's best athletes in the large variety of Olympic sports, but rather a way for the seven network to recover the superfluous fortune it paid to 'cover' the games, and to make a profit on the back of these costs by showing only the limited range/number of events that the masses (the prospective consumers of the ads) will watch and by luring the masses to the screen through crass lowest common denominator appeals to worst kind of patriotism.
The amount of money that television networks are charged for coverage rights, if this is the root cause of the commercialism surrounding the coverage, is surely not in the 'Olympic Spirit' we hear so much about.
14 August 2008
"Could someone point out to me where, in last year's election campaign, Kevin Rudd or his Labor cohorts announced they were going to commit Australia to a gang-busters immigration program?
Last year, net overseas migration was 178,000, almost 30 per cent higher than the natural increase of the population (birth rate over death rate), thanks to a policy put in place by the Howard government. Total population growth was 315,000. Under the Rudd Government, it appears set to be higher this year. Then add the growing guest-worker program for people on temporary work visas.
How is increasing the population by a million people every three years going to contribute to lowering Australia's carbon footprint? Don't ask big business, or the ALP machine, both addicted to "growth" defined by corporate fundamentalism, which means higher per capita consumption and more consumers."
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You have no real political choice. After preferences your vote necessarily goes either to (a) the ALP or (b) the Liberals. Both parties are addicted to the big business and industry driven religion of growth, and that quantity over quality mindset.
'Freedom' and 'democracy'?: They're just illusions to distract us while certain people get on with using society for personal short-term advantage.
hink of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.